The Outworlder

by S. K. Valenzuela

  Almost before his eyes closed, it came. A beautiful song, full of mystery and promises and a quiet sort of strength. And the voice—he would know it anywhere. He glanced at Rafe and Brytnoth’s muddled forms and saw that they, too, had heard the sound. A moment later, they were all three clustered together, listening.

  “It’s too faint…too faint!” rasped Jared. He sprang forward, and the others followed him.

  The mist was so thick now that he could barely see his hand before his face. He vaguely felt someone grab onto the back of his jacket.

  “Keep going,” Rafe’s disembodied voice came from somewhere close behind him. “We’re with you.”

  He stumbled forward, moving as fast as he could over the uneven ground. The song grew louder, and then suddenly it stopped.

  Jared didn’t realize until that moment that he had been walking with his eyes screwed tight shut. Now he opened them and gazed about like a man waking from a dream. The fog had lifted, and he saw Rafe and Brytnoth standing on either side of him, gaping.

  Within an arm’s reach in front of him, a sheer cliff of stone reared up to a dizzying height. Jared’s cry of despair caught in his throat when Rafe pointed at something cut into the face of the stone.

  A ladder.

  At last.

  Chapter 27

  “Unbelievable,” Brytnoth breathed. Then, with a sudden smile that illuminated his whole face, he added, “I guess she gave us pretty good directions after all.”

  Jared turned and crouched against the cliff. The others squatted down to hear what he had to say.

  “I don’t have a doubt in my mind,” Jared said in a low voice, “that at the top of this cliff we’ll find the temple. So we need to figure out now what we plan to do when we get there.”

  “We each have our weapons,” Rafe said, patting the javelin he’d laid on the ground beside him. “We just need to take our positions and pray our aim is good.”

  “Positions where?” asked Brytnoth. “Within the temple itself? Won’t we be caught?”

  Jared stared up the face of the cliff, straining his eyes to catch some glimpse of the top of the precipice. After a few moments without success, he dropped his gaze and shook his head.

  “We should split up along the ridge,” he said. “If that isn’t possible, then we’ll have to conceal ourselves within the temple itself.” He hesitated for a split second, and then added with a lopsided smile, “I’ll have to be within the temple anyway—mine’s not a distance weapon.”

  “That’s true,” Rafe nodded.

  “Why are we standing around here, then?” asked Brytnoth. “Let’s go and do this.”

  “Leave everything we don’t need behind,” Jared said, slinging the shield onto his back and checking that his sword was secure in the scabbard. “This is going to be a tough climb.”

  “Seeing as how we already left pretty much everything behind when we followed Sahara’s voice,” Rafe remarked drily, “we should be ready to go.” He hefted his javelin and pulled a small coil of rope out of one of his side pockets. “Help me secure this on my back,” he said. “I’m going to need both hands.”

  It was a grueling climb. After an hour, Jared’s muscles burned so fiercely that he wasn’t sure if he could make it the rest of the way. He hazarded a glance down and saw just how high they had already come. Looking up again, he saw the end of the ladder about fifty feet above his head.

  “Keep coming!” he gritted to the others, toiling a few feet below him. “We’re almost there…I can see the top.”

  It was all just silent, driving willpower now. Jared didn’t dare stop moving for fear that his muscles would seize up and he would be stuck. Each move tore a groan from his parched lips, and he clenched his teeth against the sound.

  At last, his fingers found the lip of the ridge and he was pulling himself over the edge, panting and shaking from head to foot with exhaustion. After a moment of blissful stillness, he reached a hand down to help his friends, and soon they were all there, gasping on the top of the world like three beached fish.

  “We can’t stay here long,” Jared croaked. “We could be seen.” He rolled onto his knees and scanned their surroundings.

  A long, narrow ridge stretched away on either side of them, and just a little to their left, not fifty paces away, Jared saw the obsidian columns of the sacrificial temple.

  “Look,” he said, pointing. “That’s where she is.”

  Brytnoth cast an eye along their end of the cliff. “There’s good cover here,” he remarked, gesturing at a clump of boulders a short distance away. “I could take up a position there and have a good shot at the dragon when he appears.”

  “What about me?” asked Rafe. “You see anything I might be able to use?”

  “You’ll need to be closer to the temple, I think,” said Jared. He studied the temple for a moment and then indicated a small escarpment of rock jutting out from the side of the temple wall. “There,” he said. “Get behind that bit of rock.”

  “What about you, then?” Brytnoth said as they reluctantly got to their feet on trembling legs.

  “I’m going to find Sahara.”

  As he and Rafe slipped along the cliff edge toward the temple, Jared glanced back to see Brytnoth’s tawny head poking up over the top of the cairn he had taken as his cover. Another moment brought them to the edge of the temple, and Jared deposited Rafe behind the rough wall of the temple.

  He took a breath and crept forward alone, sword out and at the ready. No sound came from within the temple. He flattened himself against the wall and peered around the corner.

  The inner sanctum was empty and full of sinister shadows. Four torches, two on either side, provided scanty illumination to the space. The whole interior was pillared, and between the columns horrific murals of sacrifice and death covered the walls. Dark and bloody forms crowded one upon another in a macabre dance, and weaving in and out of the haphazard mass crept the sinewy form of the dragon.

  A long, low bench hugged the far wall, directly in Jared’s line of sight. And there, huddled in the shadows near the middle of the bench, was Sahara. The tatters of her clothes seemed to be held together only by the crusted blood that caked her arms and shoulders. Heavy manacles held her ankles, wrists, and circled her throat. Suddenly, she lifted her face, and Jared felt his blood pounding in his ears.

  She didn’t see him, but swung her gaze toward the back of the room. She seemed to be listening for something. He dared not risk slipping out of cover to see what might be lurking in the back of the room, but he suddenly realized that there was another way to find out what she saw.

  He flattened himself once more against the wall and closed his eyes.

  Sahara, he called, praying with his whole soul that she would hear him. Sahara.

  He waited for what seemed an eternity, and then her voice said within his mind, I’m here.

  Thank God! Sahara, are you all right?

  Another awful silence. They’re getting to me at last, came the voice. A broken, almost spiritless voice. I can’t hold out much longer.

  You don’t have to hold out any longer, he said, almost frantic to reassure her. We’re here. We found you, thanks to your song earlier. I can see you, but I don’t want you to look this way. Not yet.

  But I want to see you! Are you really here? Have you really—

  There’s no time, he interrupted. I need you to look around the room and tell me what you see. I have to find a place to hide until the ceremony.

  There was another long silence, and he waited impatiently for her to examine her surroundings. When her voice came again, it was stronger.

  The room is empty now, she said. I thought I heard someone a moment ago, but there’s no one there. Where are you?

  Jared moved his head and shoulders into her view as he said, Look straight ahead.

  When her eyes met Jared’s, such an expression of relief and joy flooded her features that it took Jared’s breath away. Even under the grime, sweat, blood
, and tears that covered her face, she glowed.

  You’re here, she said, and there were tears in her voice. You’re really here!

  Yes.

  Without another word, he slipped around the corner. The columns marched down the length of the chamber, casting dark shadows in the flickering torchlight. The sacrificial pillar protruded like the hilt of a knife out of the smooth floor at the edge of the cliff.

  Jared realized there was only one place to hide that was close enough to the pillar to make him an effective threat, and that was exactly where he stood now. The room’s final pillar partially concealed him, and he could change his position with ease depending on his enemies’ vantage point.

  He swung his gaze back to Sahara, hesitated for one awful moment, and then took a terrible risk. Crossing the room in a few swift strides, he crouched in front of her. He laid the sword beside him on the floor and clasped both of her chilled and bloodied hands in his own.

  “I want you to be strong,” he whispered. “If you die here tonight, you won’t die alone…and you won’t die first. The only way they will get to you is through us.”

  She didn’t speak, but her hands tightened convulsively in his own.

  “Be strong,” he said. “It’s almost time.”

  He smiled at her, and watched her mouth tremble upward in response. He gently took her face in his hands and kissed her cracked and parched lips.

  “I love you,” he said. “I just want you to know that.”

  Her eyes welled with tears as she threaded her fingers in his dark hair. She pulled him close again and pressed her forehead to his. “Go!” she whispered earnestly. “Go before they come and find you here! Go! They’re coming!”

  Jared snatched up his sword and retreated to his post. Heart hammering, he tested his grip on the sword. There was nothing more to do but watch and pray.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  The door at the far end of the chamber suddenly grated on its hinges and swung open. Jared held his breath, hoping that Rafe and Brytnoth were ready at their posts.

  The entire room seemed to shake under a slow, heavy tread—an executioner’s tread. He didn’t dare look at Sahara, but he mentally willed every ounce of strength and courage he could spare in her direction.

  “Outworlder,” came the voice and the steps stopped.

  Jared heard the chains jingle as Sahara moved, but she said nothing.

  “Outworlder,” repeated the voice, chilling Jared’s blood in his veins, “your hour has come.”

  After a long silence, he heard Sahara reply, “So get it over with already.”

  The chamber echoed with the executioner’s sudden laugh. “Where is your knife now, Outworlder? Where are your companions? Their halls are destroyed. Their princes lie slain in the river. The mead that was flowing is spent. Now is the time for weeping. Desolation has come to Albadir, and your death will baptize it with blood.”

  Jared’s heart pounded in his throat. Had there been an attack on Albadir? Were the city and its people destroyed? Or was this all a cruel joke—a bluff meant to make Sahara despair?

  It doesn’t matter, he thought. I can’t do anything for Albadir now except destroy the dragon. Focus. Focus on the task at hand.

  Sahara’s chains suddenly clattered violently against her stone bench. Jared tightened his hand convulsively around his sword hilt as he listened to the noise of the chains. Sahara didn’t scream, and as the noise came again, Jared realized what was happening.

  They’re releasing her, he thought. They’re bringing her to the pillar of execution.

  The next moment, he saw her, driven forward by a creature more terrible than he could have imagined. It was taller by a man by at least two feet, with dragonish scales and features of a variegated gray. Claws like talons protruded from its fingers, and they pressed into Sahara’s arms as the monster positioned her at the pillar and wound the chains around her.

  Sahara, her face ghastly white, looked tiny and fragile beside the rough pillar and her grotesque executioner. But it suddenly occurred to Jared that she was here—that she was being fed to the dragon as a blood offering—because they were afraid of her.

  They’re afraid of her.

  Somehow, it was a comforting thought.

  “Watch,” the beast said to Sahara, rousing Jared out of his musings. “Watch the horizon, outworlder. Watch for your destruction.”

  “Anything to keep me from looking at you,” Sahara said.

  Her reward for her insolence was a blow across the face. The cruel scales bruised as they cut into her cheek, but Jared saw her bite her lips against her cry of pain.

  Jared’s hand tightened around the hilt of the sword. Watching the creature glory in Sahara’s pain, he swallowed hard.

  Do I have to wait for the dragon, or can I just kill him now? he thought.

  He knew the answer. He had to wait. If anything went wrong before the ceremony, they could lose their chance to destroy the dragon He had to stay the course, no matter what.

  “Stand here and contemplate your agonizing end,” the creature growled in Sahara’s face. “The next time you see us, we will be ready to devour you, and you will realize that you have never known pain until we rend you to pieces.”

  With another of its blood-curdling laughs, the creature lumbered out of Jared’s view. A moment later, he heard the door grate shut at the other end of the chamber.

  Jared took a breath and gazed out across the rocky landscape. The western sky was blazing red, tingeing the ragged edge of the clouds like blood on a broken knife blade. To the east, through a gap in the clouds, he saw the moon. It was full, huge and bloody, drinking in the color of the sunset like a sponge.

  It seemed that the sun set under his very gaze, more rapidly than he would have imagined possible. He looked around his pillar at Sahara and glimpsed her face turned toward him, streaming with tears.

  He wanted to speak, but a sudden sound froze his lips and the blood in his veins.

  Four voices began to speak from somewhere within the temple, their voices sounding in unison but in total discord. “Sahara Acwellan, we sentence you to death in atonement for the blood you have spilled here and on your own homeworld. You will die in the jaws of the Dragon. The hour has come.”

  As soon as the voices ceased, a mighty clang echoed and re-echoed through the temple and the cliffs around them.

  The gong.

  He knew what came next.

  And looking at Sahara’s white, grime-streaked face, he knew that she had guessed as well.

  Twice more the gong called across the wasteland, and then the air was still once more. Peering around his pillar, Jared saw that the room was empty. He looked back toward the western horizon. The dark clouds that cloaked the mountain peaks were roiling as if they were being agitated by some monstrous dervish. And then the sound reached his ears—a gritty roaring, like that of the sandstorms that plagued the deserts below.

  Something was there.

  He turned back to Sahara, hoping that perhaps she might not see what was unfolding in front of her. But she saw. She knew.

  “I’m not afraid to die,” she said aloud as soon as she caught his eye. “If you have to let me—”

  “I told you,” he said. “They have to come through us to get to you. Don’t you dare think like that! Their tyranny ends tonight.”

  The night deepened, and Jared’s nerves buzzed with anticipation. He had no idea how long they would have to wait, but as the seconds dragged on, he felt his fear growing along with his impatience.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, Jared hazarded a glance around the pillar. Sahara was twisting her hands in her chains, and Jared saw that the skin around her wrists was already rubbed raw. Sensing that he was watching her, she turned her head toward him.

  “Jared….”

  Her voice trailed off into a scream that would have shattered glass.

  Jared’s vision was suddenly obscured by a set of leathery wings and a huge, se
rpentine body. The horror of it nearly brought him to his knees. The dragon perched on the edge of the cliff. Jaws, brimming with silvered teeth that gleamed like jagged bits of metal, were snapping hungrily in Sahara’s face. She sagged against her chains, overcome at last by utter terror.

  The eyes, flaming like the long vanished sun, narrowed into slits. Two curls of smoke, like the harbingers of the desert, wound their way from flared nostrils.

  Just as it reared its head to strike, something seemed to draw its attention. A high whine reached Jared’s ears, and the next moment he saw a feathered arrow protruding from the soft skin just under the dragon’s right foreleg.

  Brytnoth’s arrow!

  He nearly yelled aloud in triumph.

  Another whine. Another arrow struck close to the first, wedging itself in dragon’s tough hide.

  The dragon heaved its hulking mass around to face the cairn where Brytnoth crouched concealed. Before Jared could move or cry out, the dragon scorched the place with a torrent of flames, bombarding it with heat until it shimmered.

  Jared clenched his teeth against his fear. When the dragon reared back on its hind legs to destroy Brytnoth, it left its vulnerable underside exposed.

  With a high and horrible battle scream, Rafe jumped out from behind his own cover, knelt, took aim, and loosed his spear. The weapon sailed true, piercing the beast’s flesh just under the massive rib cage. With a roar of surprise and rage, the dragon fixed its gaze on Rafe.

  Jared held his breath even as the dragon released its own. Rafe dove back behind the escarpment. Jared prayed it was in time to keep Rafe from being burned alive, but he had no more time to worry about his friend.

  In the agonizing silence, broken only by Sahara’s quiet, shaking sobs, the dragon turned back to its prey.

  Chapter 28

  Jared took a breath. It was all up to him now. He was all that stood between Sahara and her death-day.

  The dragon stood there, poised for the final strike. And it seemed to Jared that it hesitated, as if wordlessly vaunting over her, glorying in her terror and its certain victory.